


Exposed Chest

by zephalien



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Cheating, F/M, Gender Dysphoria, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephalien/pseuds/zephalien
Summary: the title is sort of a placeholder because I am braindead after writing this. Please enjoy. Mentions of dysphoria and cheating and anxiety and such nonsense. Written for EJ (and for me).
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller, past alec/tess
Comments: 5
Kudos: 75





	Exposed Chest

She had always cheated. He hadn't told anyone but Dave wasn't her first foray into the territory. Tess had been cheating on him since their relationship started. He had fallen for her hard. She was the type of self possessed woman he was attracted to (the kind he never had been back when he identified as a woman). She knew what she wanted to do and eat and how her career would go. He was higher up on the food chain at work than her but only because of his severe dedication to the work to the point of mania at times. She wouldn't be long for being promoted far beyond his position someday. He supported her and encouraged her. He loved seeing her passion and interest, so different from the rabid fixation he felt for his work, but they understood each other. They understood the work.  
When they were dating, she played around behind his back. She had never been quite satisfied with him and the body he inhabited seemed to be the cause. Alongside this was the dogged persistent way he would become obsessed with the cases. She was just as dedicated to her work, but where she wanted to detach and unwind and relax, he wanted to discuss, share theories, fixate. She loved him, of course. He knew Tess loved him. She would look at him so intently sometimes. She would run her hands over his cheeks and press the stress out of the muscles in his back and when her hands creeped down his front... well, she was good at that too.  
It was just that she was never quite satisfied with him. She seemed to be put off by his theorizing and fixating and, at home in bed, his anatomy. He agreed. He hated it too.   
He figured he was lucky. She never outwardly said that she was bothered by him being a trans man. She never said the horrible things his father had spat when he was young. The way she sighed, annoyed, after they would have sex occasionally cut just as deep though. After the first time she left the bed bruskly after he failed to satisfy her, he laid in bed spinning around in his thoughts. In the morning, he ordered a binder that was a size smaller.  
He found out the first time because she got a text when she was in the shower after sleeping together. He hadn't even been looking. He simply picked it up to let her know she got a message and his eyes fell on the words on the screen.   
"Let me know when your girlfriend passes out lol"   
His chest felt yanked apart and exposed. He dropped the phone onto the mattress beside him like it was burning and scrambled for his clothes. He made an excuse and ran out of the room hurriedly, heading back to his own flat.   
Tess and him talked it through. She hadn't meant it. She didn't feel that way. She would break it off. She loved Him. He believed her or maybe he just wanted to.  
She did break it off. She seemed to rededicate herself to their relationship after that, the soft touches and loving smiles returned full force. He let himself fall back to her and the iron lock around his heart loosened once again.  
She did it occasionally. She was always sorry. She made a million excuses and explanations. She hadn't been with anyone seriously before. She wasn't used to it. She just wanted to blow off some steam. She just wanted something easy and meaningless. She never said it was his fault, but the undercurrent was that Hardy wasn't satisfying her and that his work kept him distracted from trying harder to.  
It was Tess who proposed.  
He had found out she was seeing a man for a few months now and they had been arguing a lot. He had walked out on her packing his stuff from their now shared apartment hurriedly and she was crying. He told her that he wasn't sure he could be with someone who clearly didn't want to be with him and she kept saying how she loved him.  
"Don't leave, Alec. I didn't mean it." She cried after him as the door shut behind him.  
She had called him to meet her in a cafe they had frequented during their relationship. It was a favorite of them both and when she grabbed his hand and frantically told him how much he meant to her and how good he was to her and how much she loved him, he felt himself soften. When she bend down on one knee in the middle of the coffee shop, his heart leapt out of his chest.   
"I don't want to be without you, Alec. Please. I need you. Marry me." She said to him.   
He let himself believe her. He had said yes.  
The condition of them marrying was that she wouldn't fool around behind his back anymore and that he would pay more attention to their relationship and be less focused on work. She promised it was in the past. She was just missing him because he worked all the time. She just wanted someone to pay attention to her. She loved him. She pressed a deep kiss into his mouth and he lost himself in it.   
Tess was his completely for the first few months and when they decided to use a sperm donor and have a child it was the happiest time of their marriage. He went with her to the appointment. They had many long discussion about how he couldn't let his obsession with work keep him from being a father. He shook his head softly when Tess had told him bluntly she wouldn't put up with him being an absent father.  
"No," he smiled softly. "I want our child to know how loved they are always. I won't miss a second of raising them."  
Tess had gazed softly as he said it and gripped his hand.  
But the process of getting pregnant was taxing and they started to fight once again. She was a bit distant and moody and as always he was distant and obsessed with his work.   
When they finally conceived, she had been texting more and never available, missing at odd hours. He suspected her of cheating again. He never found out, because once she got pregnant they decided together they would be together for this child. They wanted to provide a home for this new baby and neither wanted to be the fighting absent parents they had grown up with. They were less affectionate with one another but when the baby was born it stopped mattering as much.  
She loved seeing how he was with Daisy and he loved seeing the maternal side of her. The time when Daisy was a baby was all soft edges and slow sensual morning sex and tired late nights changing diapers.   
Neither had much brain space for much else and Tess, if she had been seeing someone else, seemed to have stopped. So, stupidly, he let go of his suspicions.  
When he found about Dave and the lost pendant, he couldn't even manage to be shocked.   
They had agreed to not tell Daisy what happened and when the news painted him as the fool who botched the investigation, they both had just... allowed it.  
He left town after more than one threat from towns folks that if he didn't there would be consequences. It wasn't safe anymore and the apartment he had moved into after Tess and him had seperated was dull and vacant. He couldn't manage to be angry about it, mostly because he had started to be very tired.   
When he passed out in public and was hospitalized for the first time, he was distantly shocked but only barely. It's like he expected it, like the hell he had been through showing up on his actual body was as things should be. They told him he was predisposed for it and had he had extra stress lately. He just laughed at that.  
He called Tess to tell her and asked her not to tell Daisy. He moved to Broadchurch. He finally let himself fall into work after holding himself back from it for Tess and Daisy for so long and as his health got worse and the case got worse and time stretched on. It felt right like this was how it should be.

Bekka in his hotel room with her soft eyes and kindness was a mistake. He had wanted desperately to find some sort of comfort and he thought maybe he could explain his body somehow. Maybe she was open minded. Maybe she was interested in him. The combined panic and relief he felt when she laughed him off was immediate and intense. Relief not to have someone touch his body, his chest, his missing parts. Panic because he suddenly remembered Bekka's eyes scanning his chart in the hospital. She knew. She didn't want him. Her explanation of not wanting to trouble his heart seemed honest but he couldn't really be certain and resolved to avoid her as much as possible from then on. He just hoped she wouldn't tell anyone. 

When he realized he was in love with Ellie, it shocked him, properly shocked him.  
She had shown up at his house to tell him that she convinced Claire to talk to Lee.   
"I could kiss you!" He said before his brain caught up to his mouth. Her disgusted look was enough to send him spinning back in on himself, reminicing on a million small moments with Tess.   
When they found themselves in the same bed at the hotel, it was with some mild terror that Hardy laid himself down on the bedcovers next to her. She had asked if he slept with Claire and he wanted to laugh, but he just told her to go to sleep, holding back a sob. Claire wasn't the type of woman who would be happy with his body. He wasn't sure he was capable of letting someone even touch him after his divorce when he had started hiding her anyway.   
The darkness stretched between them endlessly and neither falling asleep. The tension filling the room was obvious and after an hour Ellie made a frustrated noise.  
"Alec." She said, sounding annoyed and when he turned over with a questioning look, she surprised him by kissing him.  
It was a bit messy and frantic and she pulled back nervously.  
"What was that for?" Hardy breathed, shocked, terrified. His body was still in the silence.  
"I don't.. know. I just.. I..." Ellie's face looked so broken and lost and terrified that Alec barely even thought it through as he reached for her, placing his hands on her cheeks gently and pulling her to him once more.  
It got heated quickly. Their lips moved frantically against one another and Ellie's hands touched his face and ran her hands through his hair and down his back.  
He got carried away and didn't notice until too late that her hands had loosened the buttons on his shirt and she had pressed them against the harsh fabric of his binder.  
"Oh!" Ellie said surprised.   
Alec was up and out of the bed in an instant, his shirt falling open to display his binder in full embarrassing detail. "I should have told you." He stutters out panicked.  
She looks confused and, being Ellie, she opens her mouth before thinking her words through. "You didn't have to tell me."  
He flinches at that. Of course it was obvious to her. He shouldn't have been so foolish to believe he passed well enough that Ellie hadn't noticed. She sees his flinch however and starts to backtrack frantically.  
"I just mean. You don't need to.. tell me that! I'm- it's fine, Alec! It's not like I haven't seen a binder before, christ's sake! I didn't mean anything by it. I just. You- Why would you have? It's not like we are involved, or... Were? Are? I'm-" Ellie looked like she wanted to disappear and so he jumped in.  
"No, I should have realized it was obvious. I didn't. We shouldn't have-" Hardy was saying.  
"If you say kissing me was a mistake, I'll cry, because I kissed you, you daft man!" Ellie protested petulantly and it startled out a laugh from Hardy. She also let out a surprised laugh and suddenly they both are laughing, an edge of frantic hysteria to the moment.   
Hardy sat heavily onto the mattress next to her with a sigh, the laughter falling away as suddenly as it had overtaken them. They looked at each other for a long moment.   
"You really didn't know?" He asked her the fear creeping into his voice without his permission.   
She shook her head gently moving her hand gently to touch his jaw and pull his gaze to her. "I really didn't know and I really wouldn't have cared."  
Hardy blew out a sigh of relief and a small chuckle. "How did we get here?" He asked the ceiling, suddenly exhausted.  
"In a car, sir." Ellie said cheekily and Hardy just smiled at her gratefully.   
"Come on, let's get some rest. We can deal with it in the morning. Along with every other fucking thing." Ellie bode him tugging on his shoulder.  
He let her pull him back down to the mattress and wrapped them both in the blankets.   
He can't help but pull her back into him. The last thing he feels in Ellie curling into his chest and sighing contentedly as she falls asleep against him.


End file.
